Based on the fuss Werisah had made, Kano half expected the corridor outside the lab to be filled with slime. But contrary to her expectations, there wasn’t a single bit of the gray matter in sight. “What exactly is happening, anyway?”

Her question had been directed toward An, but Werisah took it upon himself to answer. “As I mentioned, there’s been an outbreak of the slime. Though its explosive growth was intended, Eomonsa was supposed to have given it a very limited lifespan so that it didn’t spread out of control like this. Either he failed to do so, or the means by which he limited its lifespan is not functioning as it’s supposed to. It’s hard to say which at this stage.”

“What’s the big deal? Can’t you just burn it or something?” How hard could it be to get rid of slime? Weren’t necromancers supposed to be good at destroying things?

“That won’t work. The slime is really rather resilient. It’s precisely why it’s now causing us such problems.”

“Uh-huh. Well, where’s this outbreak?” There definitely wasn’t any here.

“For now, it’s mostly confined to the lower levels.” He sounded quite upset at the situation, or maybe it was just that he resented having to explain what was happening to Kano.

“Why is that a problem?”

“Because it’s growing rather quickly. It won’t be long before it covers much of the citadel at this rate. Unfortunately, there’s an ample supply of biomass for it to sustain itself in here.”

“Does that even really matter to you guys, though? Doesn’t it only affect ghouls?”

“If commanded to do so, yes. But it’s no longer responding to my commands. I believe some portions of it, including the one that allows me to control it, did die as they were supposed to. But for some reason, the rest of it has not.”

“Wait, so what will happen if the slime infects you guys, or whatever?” Kano didn’t understand how the slime-controlled ghouls worked, but she assumed it must get inside them somehow. How else would it take them over? Strange as it was, there was nothing magical about it.

“Given that the substance is now out of control, I imagine it will simply consume us to fuel its growth. That should be its default state, unless given other commands.”

“Why did you even make this stuff?” It sounded like it was practically intended to cause disasters like this.

“It was Eomonsa’s idea. He thought it would be a useful tool for taking over Shorinstown by force, if need be. But more importantly, it also served as an effective means of testing the new technologies we were developing.” He stroked his chin. “It was remarkably successful for the most part, really. Barring the current problem.”

Given the severity of the problem, at least as far as Werisah had explained it, Kano would have thought he’d be more aware of the dangers of what he’d made. But by the sounds of it, he thought they barely mattered compared to what his creation had enabled him to do.

She should have expected as much. It was typical of necromancers, but it still surprised her. How could they be so reckless? It was like whatever part of their brain that was meant to stop them from doing dangerous things just didn’t work. Or they were just insane. The latter seemed more likely to Kano. It was the simplest explanation. “So you’re not worried about the slime?”

“Not in the slightest.”

“Really? Then you must have a plan to stop it.”

“Err, not exactly. But there’s still nothing to worry about. Rapid as its growth is, we can still easily outpace it by walking. If it gets too bad, then we can simply abandon the citadel until the slime runs out of food. It would be most inconvenient, and it would delay our work significantly, but it would hardly be an irrevocable loss. Indeed, one could also view it as a rare opportunity to further develop the slime itself,” he said, his tone brightening considerably, like he’d just convinced himself that this might be a grand, new opportunity. “Though it wasn’t intended to go out of control like this, it should still provide valuable data.”

“That’s all well and good,” An said, “but surely our current work is far more important than your slime. It would make no sense to delay one in favor of the other, if that’s what you were considering.”

“Oh, of course. I was never considering actually allowing the slime to continue, merely musing over the possibility of there being nothing we can do to stop it.”

Though he explained it away smoothly enough, by the sounds of it he’d have been quite content to let the slime take over. His brief speech seemed to have convinced himself of the disaster’s potential value.

It was no wonder necromancers caused so many calamities if they were so interested in what insights they might offer. How much effort did they actually put into stopping such things? Maybe this was just part of their creative process as far as research went. Make something they only partially understand, unleash it, and see what happens from there.

Though Kano could see the appeal in avoiding doing extra work, the sheer disregard for the lives of others was chilling. Didn’t they realize they were dealing with things that could ruin large parts of the world? Or perhaps the entirety of it that was still populated? Maybe that was the problem. Maybe they never really appreciated the magnitude of what they were doing.

Their plans only seemed to turn out the way they wanted when they were trying to destroy things. Was the only reason why they didn’t do much destroying these days because there wasn’t much left to destroy? Was that how necromancers thought? They saw something they perceived as a problem and then obsessed over figuring out the solution regardless of whether other people thought it was a problem at all?

It would explain a lot, and it seemed to hold with most of what she’d seen necromancers do. Why were necromancers so similar in that regard? Had they been this similar before they became necromancers? Or did some part of the transformation alter them into being like this? Maybe it was just the inevitable result of free will in this environment. She didn’t exactly have many other examples to compare them to.

The two naturals Kano had known were somewhat different from necromancers, but they were both still mad, though Miusvon wasn’t that bad. Was there even a meaningful difference between them and necromancers in the end? Kano had previously thought there was, but she was becoming increasingly unsure. There was little she was certain of these days. Once they were one level down from An’s lab, the necromancers stopped. Looking past them, Kano saw that the floor ahead was covered in gray slime.

“What happened?” An asked, looking to Werisah, as did Kano.

“I’m not sure. I thought we had it contained to the lower levels. Its expansion is more unpredictable than Eomonsa led me to believe. Though that might be due to the command interface failing as it has.”

“Well,” Kano said, “whatever you thought, here’s some slime. What’re you going to do about it?” Were they supposed to get rid of it with their bare hands? Given that it apparently consumed biomatter, that didn’t sound like a very appealing prospect. And it wasn’t like they’d brought any tools with them. Whatever they were going to do, Kano hoped they wouldn’t have to be around the slime for too much longer. Though so slow as to be difficult to perceive, the slime was unmistakably moving along the floor toward them.

“I haven’t been able to work out an effective means of destroying it just yet,” Werisah said, “so for now, we’re focused on containment. If it can’t find anything to feed on, eventually it will wither and die.”

Despite speaking in certainties, he didn’t sound all that sure to Kano. For something that was apparently so flawed, the slime seemed to be giving Werisah no end of surprises. Perhaps it had been made too well if it was causing them this much trouble.

“How do we contain it, then?”

“First we should close all the doors so it doesn’t get beyond this room.”

They split up to do so, taking care to avoid the slime and looking for more of it. Fortunately, the initial patch appeared to be the only amount of it in the room.

They were about halfway done when An stopped to seek out Werisah. “You really don’t need me for this nonsense,” she said. “You and Kano should be more than enough to close a few doors. It’s not like the slime is going anywhere fast.”

“I thought you said you were going to help,” Werisah said, sounding almost plaintive.

“Yes, well, I’ve changed my mind. My work is far more important than this. You can clean up your own mess.”

Sighing, Werisah waved her off. “Fine. Go.”

Once An was gone, Kano and Werisah finished isolating Eomonsa’s creation from the rest of the citadel.

“Now what?” Kano asked. Presumably they’d be outside rather than in if this was all there was to his plan.

“Now we just need to figure out how it got here in the first place.” He and An walked around the room again, inspecting it for any traces of slime while the portion of it on the ground tried in vain to catch up to them.

“How did it even get into the citadel?” Without knowing that, it was hard to determine how it might have made its way to this room. Surely it hadn’t just crawled through the streets of Shorinstown. Ghouls weren’t exactly observant, but Kano doubted they could have missed that. Especially when the quantity that entered the citadel had to be large, much larger than the very obvious patch they were sharing a room with.

“Despite his staggering ineptitude,” Werisah said, “Eomonsa managed to infect one of the ghouls with a small sample of the substance, and from there all it took was a bit of careful control before it spread to most of the ghouls here.” He gestured toward the slime. “It was meant to stay inside its hosts, consuming as little as possible to keep itself alive, but as you can see, it seems to have had a change of plans.”

“You make it sound like it’s intelligent.” Kano had met plenty of dumb beings in her life, but slime had to be among the stupidest. Wasn’t it little better than mold or other simple organisms?

“On the contrary, it’s remarkably good at problem-solving and other such tasks. Within certain parameters, at least. Its actual capabilities haven’t been tested as far as I’m aware, but I recall Eomonsa saying he had to give it a certain degree of intelligence for it to be able to receive and process commands.” Werisah stroked his chin. “Though I’ve no idea how he actually accomplished it. That might be the true triumph of his work. Who knew something so primitive could demonstrate such intelligence?”

Thinking about it another way, Kano didn’t find it to be so surprising. If necromancers, who were far more advanced life-forms, could be so stupid, then why couldn’t a slime be smart?